The apparatus described herein relates to reflective displays and in particular reflective displays that utilize a variety of light valves.
Present displays generally lack one or more of the of the following characteristics attributable to video displays: compact packaging, high color resolution, higher monochrome resolution; high luminance; high color fidelity; wide gray scale dynamic range, high contrast, high degree of multiplexibility, sharpness, wide viewing angles and high ambient light rejection. It is difficult to obtain all of the above characteristics in a single display as a result of design tradeoffs that are inherent using current display technology.
For example, loss of display sharpness occurs when a generally poor collimated backlight is combined with a necessary separation gap between LCD pixels and a diffusion viewscreen. Alternatively, the absence of a separate viewscreen element requires the use of uncollimated light to provide an acceptable range of view angles. The use of uncollimated light passing through LCD pixels, however, causes undesirable color inversions and contrast loss at larger view angles. This effect is reduced by any of a wide variety of available compensation films. Such films, however, further reduce the luminance of the display. In many such cases contrast is greatly improved; however, the lower luminance reduces gray scale dynamic range.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a display that exhibits most, if not all of the referenced display characteristics.